To keep up with the modern shopper, bricks-and-mortar businesses need to focus more on the ‘me-centric’ demands of the customers. Products’ availability, saving time, avoiding the queue, seamless payment processes are just a few requirements customers are happy to have them met.
Take for example Lloyds Banking Group; its staff spends over 10,700 working days a year standing in a queue for their tea or coffee. All this queueing time means in fact losing clients for the retailers. Each year retailers lose in sales GBP 1.3 billion due to Brits unwilling to wait in a shop in a queue before leaving empty handed.
Even the most innovative mPOS terminal does not solve the waiting problem. Furthermore, mobile order and self-checkout experience should capture the feeling of being invisible or seamless, so that clients don’t even think about the payment. The question that comes to my mind is whether these invisible or seamless payment experiences are applicable only to some specific scenarios or do they have a potential for wide adoption.
To answer the above, I will describe briefly how order and self-checkout on mobile services apply in my daily life.
As I run for the train on my way to work, my phone ‘beeps’ while I pass through the gate, checking me in on my morning commute. Settled on the train I order a coffee and a sandwich by scanning a code with my mobile. A few minutes later my breakfast is delivered to my seat.
As I jump off the train, I pull out my phone again and select two cups of coffee for me and my colleague for our morning meeting. As I reach my office, I get a text informing me that my coffees are ready. I grab my order from the café pick up point and walk to my morning appointment.
At lunch I walk to our nearby supermarket, scan the barcodes on a salad and a drink with my phone, walk past the queues of people waiting at the till or self-service counter and leave the store.
That evening I meet my wife for dinner. She’s wearing a new dress that she had tried on at a local store earlier that day. In the changing room, she scanned the barcode on the dress with her mobile, had an assistant remove the security tag, and then left the store to meet me for our date.
Before my wife and I return home, I remembered that our car was low on petrol. Stopping at the station my phone beeped “Welcome Vaidas, it looks you are going to fill at the pump 5, but please select the right one if I got it wrong”. The phone was correct; I was at the pump 5. I confirmed, filled the car while talking to my wife, then continue the journey home.
My day above is not some scene from the future, it is the reality of today. It shows that technology exists and saves us lots of precious time in order to procure the products or services we need.
From a shopper’s perspective my example reveals how you can purchase products and services without going to any queue and without having to wait too long to pay. From a retailer’s perspective, it shows many different types of retailers that benefit from order and self-checkout on mobile services, and most probably my example didn’t capture all possible scenarios. Furthermore, businesses do not necessarily need “improved POS terminals” or “mPOS terminals”.
For most of the clients, every minute they can save counts. This is the main motivator for them to start using such services. Our company data shows that retention rate for such services is huge. Once clients feel the benefit, they do not want to go back and waste their time waiting.
Retailers, on the other hand need to improve the shopping experience by helping customers to cut waiting time in queues. More than that, retailers need to know who is receiving their products and services and to enable seamlessly payment processes. The payment is not something the customer even needs to think about. The end result: introducing order and self-checkout on mobile increases retailer sales without increasing operating costs.
To sum up, I believe people want services or products, and retailers should provide those in the way that the payment is felt as being invisible, or at least seamless.
About Vaidas Adomauskas
Vaidas Adomauskas is Co-Founder and CEO of WoraPay. Vaidas is an Agile evangelist in Lithuania and has many years of experience of using and implementing Agile product and project management methods in companies. Vaidas holds a Master degree in Software Engineering and Management from IT University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He is passionate about helping retailers to create order and self-checkout services on mobile for their clients in a way that payment becomes seamless. Prior to founding WoraPay, Vaidas was a Product Manager in Adform and Lavasoft.
About WoraPay
WoraPay helps retailers increase sales whilst saving time for their clients. It allows the retailer’s clients to order and self-checkout with their mobile and therefore avoid any queuing. Retailers report 5-15% increase in sales whilst their customers save thousands of hours from not having to queue. E.g. for Lloyds Banking Group
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